Laura Jeffrey’s influence in St. Paul can be felt beyond her role as one of the city’s first Black librarians. The Macalester College graduate was also deeply involved in African American institutions like the Hallie Q. Brown Center, Crispus Attucks Home, and St. Phillips Episcopal Church. The modern-day Laura Jeffrey Academy is named in her honor.
Laura Marie Jeffrey was born on March 11, 1915, to Arthur Horace Jeffrey and Sarah Smith Jeffrey. Her father also had two children with his first wife, who passed away a year before he married Sarah.
While Laura’s parents both grew up around Winona, members of the Jeffrey family first began settling in the region in the 1850s as free people of color. Different branches spread from Hart, near Winona, to the woods of Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Iowa, the Dakotas, and elsewhere. Prior to that, the family —which had both African American and Native (Nehantic, Montauk) roots—lived in Connecticut.
Shortly before Laura’s birth, her newly married parents moved into 366 Burgess Street in the North End of St. Paul, sharing the home with family on her mother’s side. After attending St. Paul Public Schools during the Great Depression, Laura was admitted into Macalester College, where she was the only African American student in her class in the early 1930s. She double majored in history and Latin with plans to become a teacher. At Macalester, she excelled as an honors student, associate newspaper editor, basketball player, member of the Classical Club, and class captain for volleyball. She was also involved with the YWCA, the Women’s Athletic Club, the League of Women Voters, and other groups.
After graduating in 1935, Jeffrey spent the next year at home in St. Paul working for the Hallie Q. Brown Center (HQB), which was still in its first decade. At the center’s 1936 annual dinner, she wrote and directed a pageant titled "The Spirit of Community Service” about the history and mission of the organization. She also became active with the Credjafawn Social Club in 1936, and gave birth to her daughter Cynthia in December of that year.
During the 1937–1938 school year, Jeffrey moved to the South for a one-year teaching appointment at the historically Black institution Georgia State Normal and Agricultural College, now known as Albany State. Returning home in the summer of 1938, Jeffrey spoke around the city about her experiences in the Jim Crow South, including at Camphor Memorial Methodist Church. Since the Jeffrey family had generations-long ties in New England, very few people in her family had experienced the ills of Jim Crow segregation, Black codes, or even slavery.
Working at HQB again, Jeffrey, a young single mother herself, took on leading the summer camp, young mothers program, nursery school, and other key community programs. Building off of her experience at Macalester’s newspaper, Jeffrey began advising the H. Q. Brown Observer newspaper in 1940. She also played for or coached a variety of sports, including girls’ basketball, golf, badminton, and bowling in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
HQB was just one organization that Jeffrey took part in. A 1941 advertisement in the St. Paul Recorder lists Jeffrey as secretary of the Crispus Attucks Home, the noted African American home for orphans and the elderly. She was also an active member of the leading Black female sorority AKA, often writing skits and performances for the group as she had done for HQB. In 1942, Laura’s script "Interpretation of Negro Life in America" was performed at a Festival of Nations event by members from Pilgrim Baptist Church, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, and Camphor Methodist Episcopal Church.
In 1950, Jeffrey was listed as a punch-press operator in the US census and St. Paul city directory, but by 1951 she was working at the St. Paul Public Library’s Central branch as a library clerk. A year or two later she was acting head of the Arlington branch. This work inspired her to go to graduate school at the University of Minnesota to study library science while still working during the day for SPPL. After earning her masters in 1958, Jeffrey moved into the role of branch manager at the St. Anthony Park branch and, later, the Highland Park branch.
Jeffrey retired in the late 1970s, and she passed away in 2003 at the age of eighty-seven. Laura Jeffrey Academy, a girls-focused charter school, was founded in 2008 and named in her honor.